TimeMachine fails backup

Posted 31 October 2007 - 09:09 AM

theotheo

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I recently installed osx 10.5 using a prepatched dvd. Everything works fine except 'time machine' The time machine application opens just fine, it all looks realy nice. But when I open de timemachine tab in the control panel it gives me an error; "backup volume could not be found"Ive tried several disks, both internal and external (usb). All formatted in osx journaled format.

Posted 31 October 2007 - 09:55 AM

theotheo

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I used to run debian so moving file back and forward using singleusermode or terminals wont be an issue. Thnx for the quick replies and clear howto's!!! very much appreciated!edit: I can imagine more people having this problem. Sticky perhaps?

Posted 05 November 2007 - 12:13 AM

quelg

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Hi,

If you downloaded the kext using Safari, it has added an extended attribute to the file that will prevent the system from using it. This is new to 10.5 and is obviously an extended security measure. You can easily check this because there is an "@" symbol at the end of the permissions block on an ls : e.g., "drwxr-xr-x@ 10 root wheel 340 2 Nov 14:47 Contents"

The people who got this to work probably downloaded using Firefox.

You can see if there are extended attributes on a file using xattr. Here's a snippet:

bash-3.2# xattr IONetworkingFamily.kext/
com.apple.quarantine <=== not going to work with this!

Also, is your drive HFS+ formatted? I assume it must be otherwise you wouldn't see it as an option in the first place. Still - worth checking. Also check that the drive is GUID partitioned not MBR. I believe that causes problems in TM.

One final check: is your disk drive name anything fancy with special characters? There have been reports of problems if the name uses special characters. Perhaps worthwhile is to use diskutil to erase the drive, create a simple name like BACKUP and ensure HFS+ (Mac OS Extended - Journaled)

Check in diskutil that the drive has "owners enabled" at the bottom left of the information screen (I suspect TM will need this set, though I'm not sure).

Also, as a last resort, try creating a blank file called ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" in the root of the drive if it isn't already there.

Other than that, I'm out of ideas. It does sound like a problem with the IONetworking kext though. It might be worthwhile going through the whole process step by step again as sometimes a step has been missed and isn't noticed.

If you don't get "_CFGetHostUUIDString: unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35" in your log or when you run some terminal command, you should be alright and your time machine should work (try partition your TM drive with GUID scheme and reselect the drive for TM after done the patch).